Still Fawning Over Fidel

Dalrymple pours scorn on The Guardian’s disgraceful obituary of Fidel Castro, yet another example of how much of the Western media simply refuses to speak the truth.

Gott’s omission of any reference to the economic effects of Castroism pales by comparison with the following statement: “Castro’s revolution was remarkably peaceful, apart from the shooting of a number of Batista’s henchmen in the first few weeks.”

This is the only reference in the obituary’s two broadsheet pages of anything that so much as hints at repression. The middle class is admitted to have left Cuba in “swaths,” but no number is given to indicate the sheer scale of the emigration, or why it took place. There is nothing about executions, about the imprisonment of dissidents, about censorship, about constant surveillance, about arbitrary arrest, about the omnipresence of propaganda. Gott simply says that Castro “gave the Cuban people back their history.”